苹果Q4财报超预期：iPhone收入570亿美元，Mac创历史新高

Like, look at it like, is this the world we want to live in, where everyone is just chatting to the AI doing this, and the guy is snooping on the entire world around them. I mean, I don't know, it's another podcast episode. Why not? Welcome to the Power On podcast. We talk about Apple and the world of consumer tech. I'm Mark Gurman from Bloomberg, and I'm joined by Vlad Savov in Hong Kong. And today we are going to start off by talking about John Ternus first earnings report and call with analysts as the CEO of Apple.

And we're also going to break down the future of Siri AI, as well as the upcoming iOS 27.3 release coming at the end of this year. And stay tuned for some Apple trivia as well. So, Vlad, what's going on, man? Welcome back. Thank you. Mark. Here in the intervening couple of weeks, Apple has dropped 1 or 2 new products. You were excited for them. How do you feel now? It's been a lot, man. I mean, there's the OLED, iPad mini, there's the new M5 Pro and M5 Max touch screen MacBook pros, with OLED, the Pro LED XDR, MacBook pros without touch in the name.

They're getting a little long winded here with their names. The M6, 14 inch MacBook Pro. There's also the M6 iMac. The iPhone two Pro was released. I got my hands on that, and I shared a lot of thoughts on that device. And I'm sure I'm going to talk a lot a bit more about that, over the show and would obviously love to hear your thoughts. Have you had a chance to play with it yet? No, myself, it's been a hot demand over here in Hong Kong and China as well.

Listen, if I want to try out the iPhone audio, I can just try out the Show Me copycat and I'll probably get the same experience, to be honest. That's funny. It's it's pretty amazing because the iPhone duo preorder was a disaster. I came out and said that they have a supply chain issue. They were not supposed to launch this until the end of November, and even then it was only going to be in the US and China. They went 70 countries wide.

You were able to get it at an Apple retail store on day one. If you lined up before four in the morning, they had between 50 and 250 units a store, right? I went to a bunch of stores. They didn't really get many preorders. This is all walk in material, and after day one you can't get one right. All the AI bots are getting them quickly. They sell out within 5 to 10 15 seconds. This is a masterclass in how not to launch a device.

If you want users to be happy and have supply, but that's neither here nor there. Speaking of supply, we need to talk about Apple earnings. This was pretty remarkable for Apple. You know going into earnings. There were a lot of headwinds. You know for Apple there were the price increases in June on the Mac and the iPad, the home devices and the Vision Pro and some other things. Then there were the price hikes to the iPhone in September, which set Apple up for basically going 1 or 2 ways.

One was people aren't going to buy the products because now they're out of reach. They're too expensive for their wallets. Or people are going to buy the products still and they're going to make even more money. Right? But margins may get hit a little bit. And then you also have the backdrop of what was the release typically in the fourth quarter in September. Apple has several new iPhones. This time they only had one main new iPhone line, which was the iPhone 18 Pro and iPhone 13 Pro Max.

The duo. You can't get them. And that launched in what's considered the holiday quarter, right? So that's after September and there's no new iPhone air and there's no new regular iPhone 18. Despite all that, Apple still reported a 114 billion and change in revenue thanks to $57 billion plus an iPhone revenue. So that means despite the big 17 Pro launch last year and the iPhone 18 Pro being super minor as an update, there was still pent up demand for the iPhone.

Whether that means people bought the iPhone 17 Pro, in the earlier parts of the fourth quarter before the 18 went on sale, or people went and still bought the 18 Pro in big numbers. And so this is a hugely successful, quarter for Apple. The Mac, they announced that fiscal year 2026, they sold more Mac units than they ever have in a prior fiscal year. So that's pretty remarkable. The iPad didn't excel, but it did okay.

Wearables, home and accessories weren't as bad as they could have been. So from a numbers perspective, I think they did all right. That's until you hit the forecast for the following quarter. But curious what you think because you opened with supply. And I think this is the key issue here. When we call this a successful quote for Apple, what we need to recognize is that the broad consumer electronics industry is like in a whole new phase.

So just growth in general is good. It's doubly impressive when you consider that that same September quarter was the worst decline on record for the smartphone industry, and we just said 50% of that revenue came from iPhones. So to your point, Mark, maybe we could say that it was a good decision for Apple to just give the Pro Series in September because that means every unit that Apple sales of iPhones is going to have a higher margin.

And the reason is we keep saying it, but it bears repeating memory prices are through the roof right now. So many models, especially across the Chinese smartphone makers, is effectively not viable financially. Apple is more insulated because it has better margins. But you and I both looked at it. Gross margin, operating margin. All of that is down for Apple. But still, the growth is really impressive because the demand is down.

We've got to give credit to the MacBook neo. We've celebrated that photo that might turn out to be Apple's products of the year because it got response everywhere, both in the US and China, the two key markets and all of that. Again, the backdrop is so important is the fact that people don't have the discretionary income. On the one hand, the global economy is not doing great. The key markets like China, China is dealing with deflation.

It's struggling to spark the consumer market. Right. We have all these issues. And Apple is growing and hitting new records and worth bearing in mind. John Ternus said this and will dive into his performance. I want to hear your feedback. During the conference call, he said, this record number of upgraders in China. So you go, yeah, they say that every quarter. But again, economic slowdown, prices are up and people are still upgrading.

So you said pent up demand is maybe we can call it built in demand. It's just everybody has years and years of Apple loyalty built in. And it's just unfree for years into it. I need to buy whatever the iPhone is. You're not giving me a regular iPhone. I'm buying the iPhone Pro and your numbers look better. I mean, all of this performance I would attribute to Apple's long history, it's not just this quarter or the past year is the history that people have with it.

A few things just want to take this piece by piece. So you mentioned the iPhone margins. And given the memory shortage, it being, you know, opportune that they only launch the higher margin Pro and Pro Max models. During the quarter. I'm told, though, this is a decision that was made two and a half, three years ago to move, the non-pro phones out of the cycle, out of the fourth quarter holiday cycle, move it to the following year into the spring.

Now, the dynamics at play there were twofold. One, Samsung had split their line up. So they have two major launches. They've got one in the spring, and one of the four fall. They split the regular phones apart from the foldables. The other factor here is Apple wanting to spread revenue across, you know, the four quarters versus tucking everything into the holiday period as they have traditionally done. So as much as Apple, you know, fans want to say that this is a soundly run business, that things don't just happen, as a coincidence, like their success in terms of the marke